Sunday, 27 February 2011

"The first Duckburg Art Gallery Catalogue . ship to Europe, China, Austrula, New York, Vietnam, all over the world. There will be over $501,000 worth of Carl Barks Painting pictured in this Catalogue. I will accept offers of $100 for each catalogue First Printing due out April 1st 2011 Printing limited to only 1000 each will be certifited and signed by me not Carl Barks"

Tuesday, 22 February 2011

Just gotta share this.
After reading all of Carl Barks "Barney Bear and Benny Burro" in the recently published book, it's a treat finding out that there were more good Barney stories made after he left the series.
Gil Turner, who wrote at least one of the Barney scripts illustrated by Barks, did a number of delightful BB & BB stories himself!
Just look at these three panels by Turner from T&J #65.

Spent the morning scanning and restoring old sunday pages. Got a batch of original "Lille Rikard" pages by Rune Andréasson on loan and prepared them for coloring by converting them to bitmap. However, lots of the gray areas will be missing when these pages are printed. No proofs has survived and the dot pattern has faded on the original boards.
Here's a sample of what the artwork looks like before it was converted.
(The inserted image is naturally not part of the page, but added in photoshop. )

BTW: The originals are fairly small. Less than A4 size!

The final, colored, pages will appear in Bamses äventyr #32 this spring.

Thursday, 17 February 2011

Now, last week I was checking comicartfans.com when I stumbled upon a set of drawings by Frank Follmer. Click on his name to go to the website where loads of his artwork is beeing sold.

A quote from that site:
"He's been called the man who should have been the 10th old man. Or maybe he's the new Charlie Thorson or "Tex"
Henson. He's Frank Follmer, and a well-known dealer of cartoon-related items was selling his artwork at the San Diego Con. Frank Follmer was one of Disney’s greatest cartoonists. “Snow White” among all, is one of the most unforgettable characters Frank mainly developed."

10th old man? One of Disney's greatest cartoonists? Well, let's just say that I dont agree. (OK. The guy was an a-m-a-t-e-u-r. How he could land a job at Disney in the 30's is beyond me. The owner of the Follmer site claims " I have a letter from Walt Disney archives signed by Robert Tieman the manager, that frank worked at Disney from April 12, 1937 to November 28, 1940. " I'd like to have that confirmed... )

Aaaaaanyway, this post is not about Frank Follmers artistic qualities but about the Disneyland Memorial Orgy.
The first image I saw on Comicartfans.com reminded me of the Wood piece.

And then I found another one, and another...

On the Frank Follmer page I found even more...

Now, the question is: Did Wood see one of Follmers pieces and simply "traced" it?
(Notice that the black and white Follmer piece is dated 1953.)
Why did Follmer do so many versions of it?
And why so long after he left Disney?
And most, most, most important: was nude Disney characters a turn on for Follmer?

Thursday, 10 February 2011

Just got a mail from Dutch comic artist Alex van Koten!Last year he and Gerben Valkema produced a free comic strip paper for the Dutch Comic-artists organisation BNS.
And this summer number 2 will be coming out.
But in order to make this possible ( To produce a free comic strip paper is expensive.) the Dutch artists have decided to organize an auction; Original comic strip art for sale. So if you want to grab some great art by Dutch comic artists (You DO!) please take a look at their blog. New items added daily ...

Wednesday, 2 February 2011

Remember the Barney Google "Brotherhood of Billy Goats" membership card I posted back in 2007? If not, check it out by clicking HERE.

Now, what did a member of this secret and mysterious brotherhood look like?

Wonder no more, cause you're about to find out.
Thanks to Terry Grotefeld who sent me a page from his father's photo album we now know who member 350373 was.

Take it away, Terry:

"My father was a member of the Brotherhood in Chicago in 1925, he was only 19 when he went from England to the USA and worked for Western Electric. He helped install the first talking pictures in America, I believe it was "The Jazz Singer" with Al Jolson."

"My father died in 1978 and his photo album had been safely tucked away and I decided to copy some of the photos for future generations to see.

He was in Chicago in 1925 till 1928, during the prohibition and the
Al Capone era. His brother Bill was with him and they took a long trip in a
very early car across America."

"[...] picture of my Father (on the left ) and
some friends all looking a bit like Chicago gangsters."